United States midterm elections: (Voter turnout in the 2018 midterm elections was 50 percent, the highest since 1914. Turnout for the 2022 midterms was estimated at 47 percent.)

Votic language, member of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family, very nearly extinct. The few remaining Votic speakers live in the border area between Estonia and Russia (a region in which pressures to speak Russian or Estonian are not so great as they are in places of easier access).

Australia: Elections: …granted women the right to vote in 1892. Women also made dramatic gains in representation, particularly since 1990. In modern elections, all citizens at least 18 years of age are eligible to vote. Voting itself is compulsory (with the exception of elections to South Australia’s Legislative Council), and nearly all…

Since the 1990s elected officials in several U.S. states have made unsuccessful attempts to lower the voting age from 18 to 16 and sometimes even younger. Student activism in the wake of the Feb. 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, brought new life to the

absentee voting, electoral process that enables persons who cannot appear at their designated polling places to vote from another location. The usual method of absentee voting is by mail, although provision is sometimes made for voting at prescribed places in advance of the polling date. Absentee

election: Balloting: The introduction of voting machines and computer technology has not substantially changed the balloting process, though it generally has made it faster and more economical. Voting machines are not without problems, in that they may marginally depress the level of voting owing to improper use, a problem that…

The earliest forms of voting were fairly simple but public, so everyone knew your preferred candidate. In ancient Greece, a small ball or token was deposited in a ballot box for a particular candidate. The use of balls was carried forward into voting in secret societies, where a white ball was

voting rights, in U.S. history and politics, a set of legal and constitutional protections designed to ensure the opportunity to vote in local, state, and federal elections for the vast majority of adult citizens. The right to vote is an essential element of democracy in any country, and the

Voting Rights Act, U.S. legislation (August 6, 1965) that aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States. Considered among the most

Szeged: …a notable cathedral, the twin-spired Votive Church (1912–29). Since 1931 an open-air theatre and music festival have been held in front of the Votive Church.

Szeged: …a notable cathedral, the twin-spired Votive Church (1912–29). Since 1931 an open-air theatre and music festival have been held in front of the Votive Church.

Western architecture: Germany and central Europe: …the Gothic Revival was the Votive Church (1856–79) in Vienna by Heinrich von Ferstel. Indeed, Vienna was the centre of the most active and intriguing adaptations of Gothic. Friedrich Schmidt, who had worked under Zwirner at Cologne, was the leading revivalist. He built no fewer than eight churches in Vienna,…

folk art: Painting: …notably as the ex-voto, or votive offering, hung in churches and chapels, and in America, where portraits and local scenes were executed in oil, pastel, or watercolour. More typically, the painted depictions that occur in folk art are incorporated into other objects; for example, the American clock faces bearing local…

Votkinsk, city, Udmurtiya, western Russia. It lies along the Votka River just above the latter’s confluence with the Kama. Votkinsk was founded in 1759 and became a city in 1935. It is famous chiefly as the birthplace of the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose home is preserved as a museum.

Bernard De Voto was an American novelist, journalist, historian, and critic, best known for his works on American literature and the history of the Western frontier. After attending the University of Utah and Harvard University (B.A., 1920), De Voto taught at Northwestern University (1922–27) and

prayer: Ancient civilizations: …form of prayer is the votum (“vow”), in which a person undertakes to offer to the divinity, in exchange for divine favour, a sacrifice, the building of a temple, or other such offerings. It is a kind of bargain in which is still felt the prudence of the peasant who…

Slavic religion: Communal banquets and related practices: …the 20th century among the Votyaks, the Cheremis, and the Mordvins but especially among the Votyaks. Such wooden buildings also existed sparsely in Slavic territory in the 19th century, in Russia, in Ukraine, and in various locales among the South Slavs.

Finno-Ugric languages: Mari, Udmurt, and the Ob-Ugric languages are rich in Turkic loanwords. Hungarian has also borrowed at different times from several Turkic sources, as well as from Iranian, Slavic, German, Latin, and the Romance languages.

Vodou, a traditional Afro-Haitian religion. Vodou represents a syncretism of the West African Vodun religion and Roman Catholicism by the descendants of the Dahomean, Kongo, Yoruba, and other ethnic groups who had been enslaved and transported to colonial Saint-Domingue (as Haiti was known then)

Simon Vouet was a painter who introduced an Italianate Baroque style of painting into France. Vouet formed his style in Italy, where he lived from 1612 to 1627. The use of dramatic contrasts of light and shade seen in such early works as his Two Lovers indicates that he began in Rome as a follower

Visigoth: …the Franks at the decisive battle of Vouillé near Poitiers.

Nauplia: …Square is the mosque of Vouleftiko, in which the first assembly of free Greece met. Pop. (2001) town, 13,124; municipality, 31,607; (2011) town, 14,203; municipality, 33,356.

Burkina Faso: European exploration and colonization: …1895, and the French officers Paul Voulet and Charles Paul Louis Chanoine (also known as Julien Chanoine) defeated the morho naba Boukari-Koutou (Wobogo) of Mossi in 1896 and then proceeded to overrun the Gurunsi lands. The Gurma accepted a French protectorate in 1897, and in that same year the lands…

Wouri River, stream in southwestern Cameroon whose estuary on the Atlantic Ocean is the site of Douala, the country’s major industrial center and port. Two headstreams—the Nkam and the Makombé—join to form the Wouri, 20 miles (32 km) northeast of Yabassi. The river then flows in a southwesterly

arch: These blocks are called voussoirs. Each voussoir must be precisely cut so that it presses firmly against the surface of neighbouring blocks and conducts loads uniformly. The central voussoir is called the keystone. The point from which the arch rises from its vertical supports is known as the spring,…

Ukraine: Literature: Marko Vovchok, who wrote Narodni opovidannia (1857; “Tales of the People”), ushered in Ukrainian Realism. Many Realist works depicted village life and contemporary society; some touched on populist themes. Panas Myrny, with his works on social injustice, became the major representative of Ukrainian Realism, but…

vow, sacred voluntary promise to dedicate oneself or members of one’s family or community to a special obligation that goes beyond usual social or religious requirements. In the ancient Middle East, individuals often made vows to a deity to perform certain acts or to live in a certain way in return

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres: Maturity: … (1820), and then again in The Vow of Louis XIII (1824), a blatant piece of pro-Bourbon propaganda celebrating the union of church and state. This picture was a spectacular success at the 1824 Salon, earning Ingres his first critical accolades as well as election to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Thus,…

Jessica Lange: …character in the romantic drama The Vow. She then played a woman whose son is murdered in In Secret (2013), an adaptation of Émile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin. The Gambler (2014) cast Lange in the role of the contemptuous, but ultimately sympathetic, mother of an English professor with a gambling…

vowel, in human speech, sound in which the flow of air from the lungs passes through the mouth, which functions as a resonance chamber, with minimal obstruction and without audible friction; e.g., the i in “fit,” and the a in “pack.” Although usually produced with vibrating vocal cords, vowels may

Indo-European languages: Vowels: …a pattern of alternation called ablaut. In the course of inflection and word formation, roots and suffixes could appear in the “e-grade” (also called “normal grade”; compare Latin ped-is ‘of a foot’ [genitive singular]), “o-grade” (e.g., Greek pód-es ‘feet’), “zero-grade” (e.g., Avestan fra-bd-a- ‘forefoot,’ with -bd- from *-pd-), “lengthened e-grade”…

Altaic languages: Phonology: …of sound harmony affecting the vowels and velar stops. In palatal vowel harmony, all the vowels of a given word are back or they are all front; further, front velar consonants /k g/ occur only with front vowels and back (deep) velars /q g/ only with back vowels. Exceptions are…

keyboard instrument: Italy: …forerunner of the similarly constructed voix céleste stop popular in the 19th-century romantic organ. The scale of the classic Italian principale was not much different from its counterpart in the north, but its mouth was narrower, its voicing more delicate, and there was a notable lack of chiff. Reeds were…

keyboard instrument: Reed pipes: …reed pipes, such as the vox humana, have very short resonators of quarter or eighth length. Pipes the resonators of which have no mathematical relationship to the pitch are known as regals; regal stops were popular in the 17th century, particularly with the North German school, and their use has…

Natalie Portman: Later work: …diva staging her comeback in Vox Lux (2018), but her next movies, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (2018) and Lucy in the Sky (2019), were not well received. In 2020 she narrated the family documentary Dolphin Reef. Portman then starred in Todd Haynes’s May December (2023), playing…

counterpoint: Counterpoint in the Middle Ages: …another part, “organal voice” (vox organalis), singing the same melody in parallel motion a perfect fourth or fifth below (e.g., G or F below C).

cantus firmus: …an existing plainchant melody (the vox principalis, or principal voice), which by the end of the 12th century was stretched so as to accommodate a melody. The 13th-century polyphonic motet, for its part, featured the plainchant cantus firmus in the tenor. (“Tenor” derives from Latin tenere, “to hold”—i.e., the voice…

almanac: …famous of them is the Vox Stellarum of Francis Moore, which was first published in 1700. These early printed almanacs devoted as much space to astrology and prophecies and predictions of the future as they did to basic calendrical and astronomical data. With the development of Western science in the…

ABBA: Cultural significance and reunion: Voyage, released in November 2021, sold more than one million copies in its first week and topped the charts in countries around the world. Voyage was warmly received by both fans and critics, and the album’s lead single, “I Still Have Faith in You,” earned…

Sir John Mandeville: …tales from around the world, The Voyage and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Knight, generally known as The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The tales are selections from the narratives of genuine travelers, embellished with Mandeville’s additions and described as his own adventures.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline: …bout de la nuit (1932; Journey to the End of Night), the story of a man’s tortured and hopeless search for meaning, written in a vehement and disjointed style that marked its author as a major innovator of 20th-century French literature. There followed Mort à crédit (1936; Death on the…

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, novel by prolific French author Jules Verne, published in 1864. It is the second book in his popular series Voyages extraordinaires (1863–1910), which contains novels that combine scientific facts with adventure fiction and laid the groundwork for science

André Gide: Great creative period: …published Voyage au Congo (1927; Travels in the Congo), in which he criticized French colonial policies. The compassionate, objective concern for humanity that marks the final phase of Gide’s life found expression in political activities at this time. He became the champion of society’s victims and outcasts, demanding more humane…

Louis-Antoine de Bougainville: …Voyage autour du monde (1771; A Voyage Round the World, 1772), helped popularize a belief in the moral worth of man in his natural state, a concept of considerable significance in the French thought of his day.

charter party: The voyage charter is the most common. Under this method a ship is chartered for a one-way voyage between specific ports with a specified cargo at a negotiated rate of freight. On time charter, the charterer hires the ship for a stated period of time, for…

Francis Garnier: …of the Mekong River expedition, Voyage d’exploration en Indo-Chine, 1866–68 (1873; “Voyage of Exploration in Indochina, 1866–68”), is a most valuable record of the political and economic situation of the countries through which the explorers passed in the 1860s.

André Gide: Symbolist period: His works “Narcissus” (1891), Le Voyage d’Urien (1893; Urien’s Voyage), and “The Lovers’ Attempt” (1893) belong to this period.

Gaspard-Théodore Mollien: …the inhabitants, and his book Voyage dans l’interieure de l’Afrique (1820; “Journey in the African Interior”) testifies to the hospitality and civility of the Africans he met.

Dominique Vivant, Baron Denon: …results were published in his Travels in Lower and Upper Egypt (1802). In 1804 Napoleon made Denon director general of museums, a post he retained until 1815. In this capacity he accompanied the emperor on his expeditions to Austria, Spain, and Poland and advised him in his choice of works…

Patrick Modiano: In a review of Honeymoon, the English translation of Modiano’s Voyage de noces (1990), one reviewer wrote, “At times he reads like a strange cross between Anita Brookner and the Ancient Mariner, forever buttonholing the reader with his own brand of exquisite angst.” Though they are usually set in…

Hou Hsiao-hsien: …Voyage du ballon rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon). Set in Paris, it tells the story of a Chinese student who tends to the son of a distracted artist, a single mother played by Juliette Binoche. The red balloon that appears throughout the movie becomes a metaphor for a…

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy: …siècle avant l’ère vulgaire (1788; Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece), a rambling account by an aged Scythian of a journey through Greece that he had taken as a young man for the sake of his education. Into this book, set in the 4th century bc, Barthélemy poured the…

socialism: Utopian socialism: …novel Voyage en Icarie (1840; Travels in Icaria), by the French socialist Étienne Cabet. Icaria was to be a self-sufficient community, combining industry with farming, of about one million people. In practice, however, the Icaria that Cabet founded in Illinois in the 1850s was about the size of a Fourierist…

Gérard de Nerval: …of his best work in Voyage en Orient (1843–51; “Voyage to the East”), a travelogue that also examines ancient and folk mythology, symbols, and religion.

Jean Rhys: Mackenzie (1931), Voyage in the Dark (1934), and Good Morning, Midnight (1939).

imram: …imram is Imram Brain, or The Voyage of Bran, which describes a trip to the enchanted Land of Women. After what seems to be a year, Bran (spelled Brân in the Welsh tradition) and his colleagues return home to discover that their voyage had lasted longer than any memories and…

Thomas Cole: A second series, called The Voyage of Life (begun 1839), depicts a symbolic journey from infancy to old age in four scenes. Shortly before he died in 1848, Cole began still another series, The Cross of the World, which was of a religious nature.

Anglo-Norman literature: Religious and didactic writings.: …saints, of which Benedeit’s “Voyage of St. Brendan” was perhaps the oldest purely narrative French poem in the octosyllabic couplet. Wace led the way in writing a saint’s life in standard form but was followed by Anglo-Norman writers in the 12th century who wrote numerous biographies, many connecting religious…

Eric Linklater: …writer, and his 30th book, The Voyage of the Challenger (1972), a nonfictional account of the expedition of HMS Challenger in 1872–76, has all the verve that his early works display. Linklater wrote three volumes of autobiography, The Man on My Back (1941), A Year of Space (1953), and Fanfare…

MS St. Louis: …notably chronicled in the book Voyage of the Damned (1974) by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts. It was later adapted (1976) into a film. In subsequent years the ill-fated voyage occasionally received attention during discussions about immigration. In 2018 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized for his country’s…

Stuart Rosenberg: Films of the 1970s: Voyage of the Damned (1976) was more ambitious, a dramatization of the 1939 voyage of the ocean liner St. Louis, which transported German Jewish refugees who hoped to land in Havana; when permission to dock was denied there and elsewhere, the ship had to return…

George Washington De Long: …year later and published as The Voyage of the Jeannette (1883). Three years after the Jeannette was sunk, wreckage from it was found on an ice floe on the southwest coast of Greenland, a discovery that gave new support to the theory of trans-Arctic drift.

Virginia Woolf: Early fiction: …she completely recast Melymbrosia as The Voyage Out in 1913. She based many of her novel’s characters on real-life prototypes: Lytton Strachey, Leslie Stephen, her half brother George Duckworth, Clive and Vanessa Bell, and herself. Rachel Vinrace, the novel’s central character, is a sheltered young woman who, on an excursion…

Jean-Baptiste Debret: …et historique au Brésil (Picturesque and Historical Voyage to Brazil; 1834–39). Within them, he recorded his sometimes sardonic observations of both urban and rural Brazilian life. He depicted Brazil’s highest and lowest classes as well as its native peoples. Although Debret avoided stereotypes, his illustrations suggest that native Brazilians…

Georg Forster: …Forster’s account of the journey, A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World (1777), was based on his father’s journals; it later appeared in a German version, Reise um die Welt (1778–80). A work of travel, science, and literature, the book not only established Forster as one of…

Louis-Antoine de Bougainville: …Voyage autour du monde (1771; A Voyage Round the World, 1772), helped popularize a belief in the moral worth of man in his natural state, a concept of considerable significance in the French thought of his day.

Samuel Johnson: Early life: …the Portuguese Jesuit Jerome Lobo’s A Voyage to Abyssinia, an account of a Jesuit missionary expedition. Published in 1735, this work shows signs of the mature Johnson, such as his praise of Lobo, in the preface, for not attempting to present marvels: “He meets with no basilisks that destroy with…

Charles-Jacques Poncet: …account of the journey, A Voyage to Ethiopia in the Years 1698, 1699 and 1700, is the only European source for the history of Ethiopia in this period. Poncet, who had lived in Egypt since 1687, departed for Ethiopia in May 1698. He ascended the Nile River and turned south…

Portuguese literature: Drama and the novel: …Viagens na minha terra (1846; Travels in My Homeland) he used the models provided by Irish-born English novelist Laurence Sterne and French author Xavier de Maistre. Many, however, preferred to follow the lead of Herculano, including Oliveira Marreca, Arnaldo Gama, and Pinheiro Chagas. Popular successes among historical novels were A…

Manoel de Oliveira: …ao princípio do mundo (1997; Voyage to the Beginning of the World) featured Marcello Mastroianni’s final screen role.

Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac: A Voyage to the moon: with some account of the Solar World, 1754). These stories of imaginary journeys to the Moon and Sun, published posthumously in 1656 and 1662, satirize contemporary religious and astronomical beliefs that considered humankind and Earth as the center of creation.

Perelandra, second novel in a science-fiction trilogy by C.S. Lewis, published in 1943; some later editions were titled Voyage to Venus. It is a sequel to Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and was followed in the trilogy by That Hideous Strength (1945). In a reworking of the biblical story of

New Zealand: Discovery: Cook’s journal, published as A Voyage Towards the South Pole, and Round the World (1777), brought the knowledge of a new land to Europeans. He stressed the intelligence of the natives and the suitability of the country for colonization, and soon colonists as well as other discoverers followed Cook…

continuous voyage, in international law, a voyage that, in view of its purposes, is regarded as one single voyage though interrupted (as in the transshipment of contraband of war). The doctrine specifically refers to the stoppage and seizure of goods carried by neutral vessels either out of or

Christopher Wheeldon: …Ballet for such performances as Le Voyage (1994) and Danses bohémiennes (1996). In 1997 his first work for NYCB, Slavonic Dances, was presented to wide acclaim. Wheeldon also choreographed Scènes de ballet for the School of American Ballet; it premiered in 1999. Set to music by Igor Stravinsky, it featured…

Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal of Charles Baudelaire: …of the concluding poem, “Le Voyage,” as a journey through self and society in search of some impossible satisfaction that forever eludes the traveler.

Katherine Mansfield: …includes “At the Bay,” “The Voyage,” “The Stranger” (with New Zealand settings), and the classic “Daughters of the Late Colonel,” a subtle account of genteel frustration. The last five years of her life were shadowed by tuberculosis. Her final work (apart from unfinished material) was published posthumously in The…

Vittorio De Sica: …last film, Il viaggio (1974; The Voyage), was an adaptation of a short story by Luigi Pirandello that paired Richard Burton with De Sica’s favourite actress, Sophia Loren.

Philip Glass: The opera The Voyage (1992) had mixed reviews, but the fact that it had been commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera (to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas) confirmed Glass’s growing acceptance by the classical music establishment.

Russell Banks: Banks later published Voyager (2016), a collection of his travel writings.

Voyager, in aeronautics, American experimental aircraft that in 1986 became the first airplane to fly around the world without stops or refueling. Piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, the craft took off on December 14 from Edwards Air Force Base, 60 miles (100 km) northeast of Los Angeles, and

Voyager, in space exploration, either of a pair of robotic U.S. interplanetary probes launched to observe and to transmit information to Earth about the giant planets of the outer solar system and the farthest reaches of the Sun’s sphere of influence. Voyager 2 was launched first, on August 20,

Voyager 1, robotic U.S. interplanetary probe launched in 1977 that visited Jupiter and Saturn and was the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space. Voyager 1 was part of a twin-spacecraft mission with Voyager 2. The twin-spacecraft mission took advantage of a rare orbital positioning of

Horace Bénédict de Saussure: …the first volume of his Voyages dans les Alpes (1779–96; “Travels in the Alps”), a work that contains the results of more than 30 years of geologic studies. In 1783 Saussure built the first hygrometer utilizing a human hair to measure humidity. He also performed early laboratory experiments on the…

Jules Verne: …Journeys”)—Cinq semaines en ballon (1863; Five Weeks in a Balloon). Initially serialized in Hetzel’s Le Magasin d’éducation et de récréation, the novel became an international best seller, and Hetzel offered Verne a long-term contract to produce many more works of “scientific fiction.” Verne subsequently quit his job at the stock…

Hugh Lofting: The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle (1922) won the Newbery Medal as the best children’s book of the year.

Voyageurs National Park: …mostly French Canadian frontiersmen called voyageurs (French: “travelers”), who were involved in fur trading in the area in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The voyageurs used large birch bark canoes to carry beaver pelts and trade goods between the Canadian Northwest and Montreal. The park occupies an area…

Voyageurs National Park, region of lakes and wilderness in northern Minnesota, U.S. The park lies along the Canadian border, east of International Falls. Authorized in 1971 and established in 1975, it was named for the mostly French Canadian frontiersmen called voyageurs (French: “travelers”), who

Voyelles, sonnet by Arthur Rimbaud, published in Paul Verlaine’s Les Poètes maudits (1884). Written in traditional alexandrine lines, the poem is far from traditional in its subject matter; it arbitrarily assigns to each of the vowels a different, specific colour. Suggestions as to the inspiration

René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d’Argenson was a French minister of foreign affairs under King Louis XV from 1744 to 1747. The son of a lawyer, he received legal training and, from 1720 to 1724, served as intendant (royal agent) in Hainaut. As patron of the Club de l’Entresol in Paris, he

René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d’Argenson was a French minister of foreign affairs under King Louis XV from 1744 to 1747. The son of a lawyer, he received legal training and, from 1720 to 1724, served as intendant (royal agent) in Hainaut. As patron of the Club de l’Entresol in Paris, he

voyeurism, human sexual behaviour involving achievement of sexual arousal through viewing the sexual activities of others or through watching others disrobe. To some extent voyeurism is widespread; various types of sexual display are a normal part of sexual attraction and mating behaviour in most

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Middle years: …Daydreams), and his first opera, The Voyevoda (1868).

Wood Family: …Wood appears to have employed Jean Voyez (c. 1740–after 1791), a modeler of French extraction who for a brief time had been employed by Wedgwood. Voyez probably modeled his “Fair Hebe” jug for Wood, and several models in the style of Paul-Louis Cyfflé of Lunéville may also be his.

War and Peace, historical novel by Leo Tolstoy, originally published as Voyna i mir in 1865–69. This panoramic study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis, is generally regarded as a masterwork of Russian literature

Voynich manuscript, illustrated manuscript written in an unknown language and thought to have been created in the 15th or 16th century. It is named after antiquarian bookseller Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912. Scholars and scientists have sought to decipher the text since the manuscript

Vladimir Voinovich was a Russian writer and dissident known for his irreverent and perceptive satire that often ran afoul of Soviet authorities. Voinovich’s father was a journalist who spent several years in a forced-labour camp, and his mother was a teacher. Vladimir served in the Soviet army from

English literature: The Edwardians: …in the period, dissected in The Voysey Inheritance (performed 1905, published 1909) and Waste (performed 1907, published 1909) the hypocrisies and deceit of upper-class and professional life.

Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was a British architect and designer whose work was influential in Europe between 1890 and 1910 and was a source of Art Nouveau inspiration. Voysey was the son of Charles Voysey, founder of the Theistic Church. He was articled to J.P. Seddon in 1874, became assistant